NewSouth

"Behold, This Dreamer", Charlotte Miller, NewSouth Books, 550 pages, $27.95

By Robert Ely, Special to the Advertiser

Charlotte Miller of Opelika has written a perfect novel for long winter nights by the fire. She skillfully evokes the pungent fragrance of woodsmoke and wonderful details of a time not long ago.

Janson Sanders is dirt farmin' red trash in the eyes of his "betters" who live in the big houses of east Alabama and west Georgia cotton plantations in the 1920's. But Janson knows he is much more, and nothing will ever change his mind.

As Miller writes in the first paragraph of this big, fine book, "There was as much pride within Janson Sanders as there was in any man in Eason County, though few people saw in him any reason for pride. Pride had no place in patched overalls and callused hands, in a remade shirt and sunburned skin, or in the mixed blood that showed so clearly in his face and his coloring."

One can often tell a great deal about a novel by the cadence and scope of its first paragraph. Miller's cadence is swift and literary, her scope epic and cinematic. She knows how to get a story going, keep it moving, and magnetize our attention until the final sentence.

Janson's mother, Nell, is full-blooded Cherokee. Her ancestors are buried in unmarked graves along the infamous Trail of Tears. His father, Henry, is an Irish-American, three generations removed from the horror of the landlord evictions and massive starvation occasioned by the potato famine of 1845-47.

In the great American Diaspora, Janson's blood runs deeply in most of us, without regard to our particular port of entry or the privations unique to us or our ethnic ancestors. And there is something in Janson's story for everyone.

First, it has an excellent plot: the universal saga of separaton, initiation, trial, and return which gives our human narration both drama and meaning.

Janson's parents, Henry and Nell Sanders, have an enormous capacity for love and work which allows them to succeed as small freeholders in Eason County in east-central Alabama. Then, cotton prices fall dramatically, and Henry is forced to sell out-of-county. His independence calls down the wrath of Walter Eason, the owner of everyone and everything in the jurisdiction. Henry and Nell will not be intimidated, however, and so Walter burns them out. Janson's parents soon die, and, at 18, he loses his land and is forced into exile in Endicott County in west Georgia.

In Georgia, Janson works every minute of every day as a farmhand on the Whitley plantation, never giving up for a moment his dream of eventually saving enough money to return to Alabama and reclaim his homestead. William Whitley, who owns the Whitley plantation as well as half the people and property in Endicott County, wants to own the other half as well. He is hip-deep in bootlegging and recruits a semi-reluctant Janson into his operation.

Janson falls in love with Whitley's daughter, Elise, who also falls in love with Janson. This does not sit well with the greedy, bigoted and violent Whitley, or his sadistic son, Bill. As a consequence, Janson's initiation and testing are as tormenting and torturous as anything Olympian or Biblical.

Miller takes her title and epigraph from Genesis 37: 18-20, in which Joseph's brothers conspire against him and say, "Behold, this dreamer cometh. Come now therefore, and let us slay him, and cast him down into some pit." It is enough to add that Janson-Joseph is thus cast down repeatedly. Readers familiar with Joseph's story will find many parallels with Janson's.

The love stories Miller gives us in Henry and Nell, Janson and Elise, are tender, convincing, and poignant. The black hats are black and the white hats are white in Miller's novel, but most of the time, she gracefully avoids caricature and sentimentalism. Miller also creates considerable suspense. Her best dramatic scenes remind us of James Dickey in "Deliverance" or John Grisham in "A Time to Kill". Time after time, we hold our breath and hope for the best.

For all its abundant virtues, "Behold, This Dreamer" would be a better novel if it were slightly shorter. Miller needlessly repeats herself in words that defeat her dramatic purpose and are sometime irksome. For example, when she tells us, on page 73, that Janson "had never been so hungry before in all his life" and again on page 74 that "he had never been so hungry before in all his life", we more than get the point.

Get the point--this is another device that Miller greatly overuses--the suspended, interrupted, or repeated thought. The dash, a useful mark of punctuation, loses effect in proportion to its frequency.

These stylistic reservations should not prevent anyone from rushing out to buy this book. It is like a finely grained, well-seasoned piece of firewood cut from the white oak core of American literature in the 20th century. It burns long and clean and gives us an abundance of light and warmth.

Robert Ely is an associate professor of English at Alabama State University and an attorney in private practice in Montgomery. He is the author of "Mose T's Slapout Family Album" and the forthcoming "Encanchata."